Designers

Style

Setting

If there is one thing every engaged couple should do, it’s find a photographer who connects with you. Someone who is going to be able to capture the very essence of your day so you have the memories captured for years and years to come. These sweet lovebirds clicked with the uber-talented Jeffrey and Julia Woods and we’re so lucky they did because that means we have a stunning gallery from their big day to enjoy. So click here for more!

J.J. and I met as neighbors in 2008 after he “fake-proposed” to me in an attempt to get a spouse discount at the gym where I had a free membership through my medical school… spontaneous & fun, just like the rest of our relationship! He asked me to marry him two and a half years later on a ski vacation in Jackson Hole, WY with my grandmother’s engagement ring, making me legitimately the happiest and luckiest girl in the world! The next year and a half before our June wedding was insanely busy for us… planning the wedding together while living an hour and a half apart, me finishing med school and interviewing across the country for residency, him finding a new job, and then us buying a house and planning to move to Charleston, SC immediately after our wedding! It was a crazy time, but a fun one.

Our biggest goal was for our wedding day to be an occasion where all of our family & close friends could come celebrate and have an absolute blast with us, already knowing that it would be the best day of our lives regardless. I pictured a romantic and elegant decor, using white and champagne colors with a bright spring flowers, a simple ceremony full of love and joy with touches of our personalities showing throughout every part of the day. Figuring out these personal touches was definitely the most fun part for me and something I put a lot of thought into. We put together gift boxes for our hotel guests containing treats from each of our home towns and from Jackson Hole, had a wishing tree in lieu of a traditional guest book that we plan to read on our first anniversary, made table numbers with photos of each of us at the corresponding age (by the way, so fun to go through our childhood pictures together), and wedding cake with words in icing of special meaning to us. We picked out a signature drink made by a friend at our engagement party, and my mom put together the most delicious late-night dessert table with cake pops and SC-shaped cookies.

I was almost in tears when I saw how beautiful the church and Country Club turned out… and I was definitely in tears when I saw my husband-to-be waiting for me at our first look, which was such a special moment between us and also really helped calm our nerves!

One of my best and earliest decisions was getting the help of a wedding planner, our family friend Denise. Her organization and task-managing kept us on track and helped me pull together all the above details for the day with minimal stress. We really could not have been happier with our vendors—Jeffrey and Julia Woods did a fabulous job capturing the day’s special details, the Champaign Country Club was accommodating in every way up to weeks before the wedding, our florist Rick Orr took my ideas to a whole new level of gorgeous, and our DJ kept literally all of our guests on the dance floor all night.

The entire day was better than I could have ever dreamed, and there is no better feeling than being surrounded and supported by so many loved ones in our lives while we became husband and wife!